CardUp 1.7% fee on any payment type with OCBC cards – buy miles from 1.04 cents

If you’re an OCBC Voyage, Premier Visa Infinite or 90°N cardholder there’s a new CardUp deal running for the next few months offering you a very competitive 1.7% fee on any one-time payment if you haven’t used the service before, allowing you to buy miles from as little as 1.04 cents each.

There’s also a 1.8% fee offer on the first two payments in a recurring series for existing CardUp users holding the Voyage or Premier Visa Infinite cards.

These could be useful income tax payment options this year if your bill is imminently due, but better still the codes are valid for any supported payment type (so if your income tax isn’t due soon, save them for other expenses is our advice).

New users promotion (1.7%)

The offer is available to new CardUp personal account users, for a payment scheduled between 1st April 2022 and 31st August 2022, both dates inclusive. The payment due date must be on or before 5th September 2022, being the last date on which it must arrive at the recipient.

This takes account of CardUp’s requirement to schedule payments at least three working days before the due date, to allow for processing.

Simply use the promo code OCBCAFF17 or OCBC90N17 at the ‘Amount’ stage, prior to uploading the supporting documents and reviewing the payment.

OCBCAFF17			2.6%	1.7%
New Users: One-time payment or the first in a recurring series with an OCBC Voyage or OCBC Premier Visa Infinite card (no cap). Full details here.

OCBC90N17			2.6%	1.7%
New Users: One-time payment or the first in a recurring series with an OCBC 90°N card, capped at S$10,000. Full details here.

Remember this is a one-time use promo code, so to maximise the value you should save this for your largest upcoming payment.

While the payment amount is unlimited for the Voyage and Premier Visa Infinite cards, it is capped at S$10,000 for the 90°N card, after which the regular 2.6% fee will kick in for the amount above S$10,000.

For example, for payment of S$10,900 with the 90°N card the first S$10,000 will attract a fee of 1.7% (S$10,000 x 1.7% = S$170) and the remaining S$900 will attract a fee of 2.6% ($900 x 2.6% = S$23.40). Only the final fee of S$193.40 will be reflected in this case.

Full terms and conditions for use of these promo codes are available below:

• Voyage and Premier Visa: OCBCAFF17 T&Cs
• 90°N: OCBC90N17 T&Cs

Each promo code can only be applied once per user, so if you have both an OCBC Voyage and an OCBC 90°N card, for example, you could apply both codes to two separate payments between now and the end of August 2022.

Cost per mile

Here’s how the cost per mile looks for a one-time payment at 1.7% fee.

Card	Miles per S$1	Cost per mile (1.7% fee)
OCBC Premier Voyage OCBC PPC Voyage BOS Voyage	1.6	1.04¢
OCBC Voyage	1.3	1.29¢
OCBC Premier VI	1.28	1.31¢
OCBC 90ºN	1.2	1.39¢

These all represent competitive rates to buy KrisFlyer miles, which we value at 1.9 cents each.

Existing CardUp users offer (1.8%)

CardUp also has a deal running for new and existing OCBC Voyage and Premier Visa Infinite cardholders, with a 1.8% fee on the first two payments in a recurring series.

CardUp lets you set up recurring series payments on a weekly, monthly, quarterly or six-monthly basis, to support a variety of regular payment arrangements.

Your recurring series can be as little as two payments in total, while still using the promotion code, so you might consider settling a single one-time bill to your provider in two separate payments one week apart, if the payee is happy with that.

OCBCAFF18			2.6%	1.8%
Existing Users: First two payments in a recurring series with an OCBC Voyage or OCBC Premier Visa Infinite card (no cap). Full details here.

Unfortunately OCBC 90°N cardholders are not included in this existing customers promotion.

Full terms and conditions for use of this promo code are available below:

• Voyage and Premier Visa: OCBCAFF18 T&Cs

Here’s how the cost per mile looks for the first two recurring payments at a 1.8% fee.

Card	Miles per S$1	Cost per mile (1.8% fee)
OCBC Premier Voyage OCBC PPC Voyage BOS Voyage	1.6	1.11¢
OCBC Voyage	1.3	1.36¢
OCBC Premier VI	1.28	1.38¢

Should you use this offer for income tax?

If you cast your mind back to around a year ago, we saw the best ever deals offered by the banks and card payment providers for those settling their income tax by credit card.

For those holding Citi cards, a generous 2 mpd PayAll deal allowed you to buy miles for 0.8 cents each last year, but there were also competitive offers for non-Citi cardholders including from CardUp itself and rival ipaymy.

We don’t expect this year to be any different, but none of the income tax offers have launched just yet, so our advice is to hold off for as long as possible before making the payment, even if you’ve already received your Notice of Assessment (NoA)

That’s because the deals are likely to be launched either later this month or by early May.

Remember you have one month to settle your income tax bill from the NoA date, if you are paying by lump sum, so even if you just received your bill you still have some time to wait for the offers to come through.

You may think 1.7% is probably the best deal you’ll get for income tax payment, but remember this promo code for new-to-CardUp OCBC customers is valid for all payment types.

It may actually be better to save this one for another bill payment you may have coming up in the coming months, like for home improvements or an insurance premium, on the basis that you’ll probably be able to settle your income tax bill with a ~1.75% fee soon anyway.

However, if your tax bill is imminently due there’s not much choice – if you’re eligible then you could certainly do a lot worse than take advantage of this 1.7% fee offer in that case.

How to unlock the discounted fee

CardUp’s user interface makes it quite logical to set up a new payment and apply one of these promo codes.

Set up your payment as normal on CardUp and at the stage where you enter your payment amount and bill reference there is a ‘Promo Code’ field, just before the applicable fee is quoted.

This is where you can enter the OCBCAFF17, OCBC90N17 or OCBCAFF18 code, depending on which card and offer you are using.

Note that entering the code at this stage will not change the fee, you’ll have to click ‘Continue’ to see the discount reflected.

Here’s an example using my OCBC 90°N card to make a S$5,000 education payment.

As you can see the usual S$130 fee is reduced to S$85 (1.7%) once the code is entered.

Other CardUp promo codes

CardUp usually charges a 2.6% fee for personal payments made through its platform, however there are some other ongoing promotional rates currently on offer for all Singapore-issued cards, not just selected OCBC ones.

Full details for these deals are available at the CardUp website, or via the T&Cs links below:

• RECURRING185
• GET225
• SAVERENT179

If you’re new to CardUp and you hold the OCBC Voyage, Premier Visa Infinite or 90°N cards, this 1.7% one-time fee offer for any payment type is a great rate, allowing you to buy miles from as little as 1.04 cents each.

For existing CardUp customers there’s also the opportunity to pick up a 1.8% fee on the first two payments in a recurring series (which can be as short as two payments in total if you like), but only for those with the Voyage or Premier Visa Infinite cards.

Unless your income tax payment is due for imminent payment, our advice is to save these codes for other payment types over the next five months, since we’re expecting the regular annual deals for settling your income tax by credit card to be released in the coming weeks, and they’re usually pretty close to this.

That will then allow you to save these codes for another payment if possible, to replace a 2.25% fee instead.

Sign Up HERE

Links on Mainly Miles may pay us an affiliate commission.

(Cover Photo: CardUp)